Quote: sootyj @ 6th November 2013, 11:04 PM GMTBut somewhere along the line, religious indoctrination of all stripes is poisonous, insidious and bloody dangerous.
The problem with that argument, as atheist as I personally am, is that Jennie's right that the research tends to show the opposite. Religious people do tend to be happier. That's not necessarily because religion is "good for you" but it maybe does say something about its many positive elements - the sense of community, the calming effects of ritual, the belief in a support network...I mean, there are very obvious cases where organised religion has done more harm than good and we all know about them, but then there isn't really an anecdote connected with "I'm religious and it makes me feel nice" so I think the stories we hear are largely biased towards the negative.